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Does this appear normal?? Battery Voltage

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Old Dec 12, 2011 | 03:15 PM
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Does this appear normal?? Battery Voltage

Got back from a 3 week business trip. Both batteries low(too low to crank). After charging batts w/2 chargers got her started. Noticed on my Scangauge2 (thank you FTE) that the battery voltage was down to 11V. Took appx 1.5-2 minutes for the alternator to kick it up to 13.6-13.8 volts. Has anyone else seen this? Normal operation?
FYI do not leave a GPS plugged in with a bad battery. My batteries kept trying to charge it. No problems with batteries after unplugging same. Starts and charges fine except as noted with long alternator build time!
2006 6.0 F350 DRW
 
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Old Dec 12, 2011 | 03:18 PM
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Originally Posted by phantomphixer
...Noticed on my Scangauge2 (thank you FTE) that the battery voltage was down to 11V. Took appx 1.5-2 minutes for the alternator to kick it up to 13.6-13.8 volts. Has anyone else seen this? Normal operation?
Yes, this is normal on a 6.0 diesel. Your glow plugs are on for up to 2 minutes, and your alternator does not kick on to protect it from the high current draw of the GP. Your charging voltage looks about like mine, at idle.
 
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Old Dec 12, 2011 | 04:57 PM
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+1, I'm with Bill on the alternator time-out, mine does the same. Your charging voltage looks ok also. Batteries don't like that kind of mistreatment though.
 
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Old Dec 12, 2011 | 07:19 PM
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Originally Posted by bpounds
Yes, this is normal on a 6.0 diesel. Your glow plugs are on for up to 2 minutes, and your alternator does not kick on to protect it from the high current draw of the GP. Your charging voltage looks about like mine, at idle.
X3...normal operation!
 
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Old Dec 12, 2011 | 08:11 PM
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Yepp, sounds normal.

If you have a good set of batterys, leaving a GPS plugged in should not drain them enough to not be able to crank the truck over IMO
 
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Old Dec 12, 2011 | 08:18 PM
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Is yours a single or dual alternator setup?
 
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Old Dec 13, 2011 | 03:25 PM
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To the best of my knowledge, it only has one alternator. Where is the second one mounted. Couldn't see it in the 6.0 Bible.
 
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Old Dec 13, 2011 | 03:36 PM
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you need to seperately fully charge and seperately load test the batteries. If one of them is bad, replace both. Low voltage can kill your ficm which you definitely don't want.
 
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Old Dec 13, 2011 | 06:29 PM
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Phantom, did you check any of the FICM values?
 
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Old Dec 13, 2011 | 06:51 PM
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Originally Posted by phantomphixer
Starts and charges fine except as noted with long alternator build time!
I took him at his word, that all was fine, except for a 3 week sit. Other than batteries probably being a bit weak/old, I'm not sure why you guys are looking for problems.
 
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Old Dec 14, 2011 | 02:54 PM
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FICM voltage at 48V. Definitely made sure that was good. Batteries are less than a year old. Changed them last spring.
Still suspect the GPS dragging it down. Temps went from 80s in mid Nov to 30s while I was gone. Probably put a solar trickle charger on the dash for long down times. I will watch closely and post if it changes either way.
Thanx
 
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